Ballad of the Stone
A conversation for the ages
Once, upon a mountain walk,
I rested on a handsome rock.
“Old stone,” I said, “how many a year,
have you lain in this biosphere?
How many epochs in this place
have passed before your granite face
as ceaseless scenes upon a stage,
since, what, the late Triassic age?
Or are you from the Paleozoic?
Forgive my ignorance, old stoic.
But what a miracle that man
can measure the entire span
since born amongst volcanic tuff
You took the igneous form…”
“Enough!”
a voice exclaimed. I started back
and tensed as with a heart attack.
At length I quavered, “Who was that?”
“Tis I, old stoic, you pompous prat,”
the voice went on, with deep derision
though nothing moved before my vision.
“My spirit can no longer brook
its scorn of rantings so mistook.
By all means hold your theories
of little men if you so please,
but I resent your weaving me
into such base chronology.
To hear my person thus included
in human nonsense so deluded –
it really grates against my grain
and causes me peculiar pain,
as when one of my smaller kin
gets lodged inside your moccasin.
How arrogantly you suppose
that time like Zeno’s river flows.
There’s no such change from my perspective,”
he curtly ended his invective.
I scarcely knew which greater shock
to reel from – that this sapient rock
could speak my language, or his views,
which all my learning so abused.
“Wise boulder,” I at length replied,
“forgive my scientific pride,
but surely you do not dispute
my species’ knowledge absolute
of progress and of time’s elapse…”
“It may strike you that way perhaps,”
the stone cut in, “But I don’t see
such signs of temporality.
You living creatures pass me by –
you’re born, you blossom, wither, die...
it’s all the same, in spring or fall;
you’ve seen one year, you’ve seen them all.”
“I see,” I said, and quickly hastened
to be polite, though sorely chastened.
“And by what name shall I address
the vessel of such rare sagesse?”
“Call me Peter if you want.”
He used a tone most nonchalant.
“Well, Peter, I’m most curious
how ’tis you speak our language thus.”
“We stones are very quick with tongues,”
he said, “and there are those among
your kind who pass this way each year.
Some talk, some leave their markings here.
Yes, oftentimes when nature calls
the issue on poor Peter falls.
And one young man…shall I be frank?
no, stay, there is no need to yank
yourself away like one possessed.
These scenes, at least as you’d profess,
passed in a bygone century
or in the future, as may be.
And time has washed all stain away –
if you believe in yesterdays.”
I recomposed myself with haste
and conquered my pronounced distaste.
“Yet, in your state so solitary
you practice our vocabulary.
For with whom else can you converse?
Our absence must weigh as a curse.”
“Not in the least,” the stone retorted,
“You’ve got the universe distorted
by thinking man preeminent
among your fellow residents.
The wagtail’s poetry is wasted
upon an ego so inflated.
The harmony of manatees
is finer than your symphonies,
but you could never understand
expressions of a scale so grand.
As for the intercourse I share
with fellow rocks and streams and air,
the content’s simply too profound
to translate into human sound,
though there are some of your kind who
have fathomed it, and will, and do.
“Well, Pete, if I may call you that,”
I answered, “It was nice to chat.
“You’ve humbled me and all my race,
but though you claim a timeless space,
yet I’ll bestow a souvenir,
of such a nature ’twould appear,
was never yet by human left
upon your noble lithic heft.
So saying I scanned the scenery
and seeing nought but greenery,
I quickly dropped my hiking shorts
and squatted with my knees athwart
to make a solid demonstration
of Newton’s precepts and causation.
“What, Pete, no further oratory
to greet my proof posteriori?
Though I confess you’re better suited
to stay in stony silence muted.”
This said, I bid dear Pete adieu
and started off for scenes anew,
while vowing ne’er to speak my mind
again to ought but humankind.
Sam Powney is an editor based in Hong Kong. He writes comic verse, poetry, and other pieces for fun, and is a longstanding regular at Peel Street Poetry.
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